We list 7 masters Scholarships for Nigerian Students in the United Arab Emirates, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 6 of them are fully funded. 3 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
United Kingdom
30
Australia
20
China
11
United States
11
Canada
8
Sweden
8
Belgium
7
Italy
7
Japan
7
Switzerland
7
United Arab Emirates
Netherlands
6
Russia
6
Germany
5
New Zealand
5
Saudi Arabia
5
Thailand
5
Brazil
4
Ireland
4
Turkey
4
Denmark
3
France
3
Singapore
3
Austria
2
Norway
2
Qatar
2
Written from the 7 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 7 masters scholarships in the United Arab Emirates open to international students, including Nigerian graduates. Six of the seven are labelled fully funded by the awarding body. The seventh does not state its funding position either way, so treat it as an award whose terms you must confirm directly before you build any plan around it.
The list is not only for masters applicants. The same awards also appear at other levels: 6 of them cover PhD study, 2 cover bachelors, 1 covers postdoctoral research and 1 is at high school level. That matters if you are weighing a masters now against a doctorate later, because a single provider may carry you through both.
Of the seven awards, 3 are open to Nigerian applicants on the wording of the award itself. Within that group of three, none names Nigeria or the wider region as a target, and all three simply carry no nationality restriction. The remaining 4 do not state their eligibility on the award page at all. That is not a refusal. It means the information is not written down where we can see it, and you would need to ask the university or foundation before assuming you qualify or do not.
So the honest position is this: three awards are clearly open to you, four are unclear. Nothing on this page should be read as a guarantee of eligibility.
Where awards state their benefits in writing, the pattern is broad rather than partial. 5 name tuition. 4 name accommodation. 4 name health insurance. 3 name living costs. 2 name travel, and 2 name research or training costs.
Read those as what the award text says, not as a promise of what lands in your account. A tuition waiver and a stipend are different things, and an award that covers tuition and insurance but not living costs still leaves you funding your own food, transport and phone data in a country where the dirham does not bend. Before you accept anything, find out whether the monthly payment is stated, when it starts, and whether it continues through the long research phase of a thesis.
The requirements cluster tightly. 4 awards ask for an English test score, naming IELTS or TOEFL. 4 state a minimum degree class. 4 ask for letters of recommendation. 3 ask for a research proposal.
For a Nigerian applicant, two of these deserve attention early. The first is the degree class. Where an award says "upper second" or "second class upper", that is the 2:1 on your transcript, and the wording on your Nigerian statement of result needs to match what the university expects to see. Whether an HND is accepted in place of a degree is decided by each university, not by this page, so ask the admissions office in writing and keep the reply.
The second is the English test. A score costs money, and the test date has to fall before the application deadline, not after it. If you are applying to several of these awards, one test result can serve all of them, so book once and use it across the applications.
A research proposal is a different kind of work. It is not a personal statement. If three of these awards want one, you are writing a document that has to stand on its own for a committee that does not know your department. Start it earlier than you think you need to.
Providers on the page include Khalifa University, MBZUAI in Abu Dhabi, UAEU, the American University of Sharjah and the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research. Field-specific awards are thin in number: 1 sits in Computer Science and IT, 1 in Engineering and 1 in Natural Sciences. Most of the list is open across disciplines, which is useful if your first degree is in the humanities, law or the health sciences.
Three awards carry a stated date. Three are still open at the time of writing. Four are undated, and three recur annually, which means the cycle repeats and a missed date is not the end of the road.
The busiest months are April, with two deadlines, and March, with one. The three closing soonest are:
That spread gives you a real sequence rather than a single cliff edge. The Al Qasimi deadline arrives first, so if you are applying to it, your documents need to be moving months before March. Khalifa and MBZUAI follow in April, which means a single document-gathering effort can serve all three if you start early enough.
You will be assembling transcripts, a statement of result or degree certificate, a passport data page, reference letters and, where required, a test score. Transcripts from Nigerian universities take time, and courier fees are paid by you. Request transcripts for every institution you have attended in one go, and ask for more copies than you think you need, because replacements cost another round of fees and another wait.
Reference letters are the quiet bottleneck. Four of these awards ask for them. Approach your referees with the deadline in front of you, give them a summary of what you are applying for, and follow up politely rather than assuming the letter has been sent.
Open the three awards with the nearest deadlines first and read their eligibility sections in full. Confirm whether your degree class matches what they state, and whether an HND would be considered if that is your qualification. If the award does not state its eligibility, email the provider and ask directly — you lose nothing by asking and you avoid building months of work on a wrong assumption.
Then work backwards from the deadline. Test booking, transcript requests, referee follow-ups and a research proposal all take weeks, not days. The awards on this page that recur will come round again, but the ones closing on 1 March, 14 April and 30 April will not wait for a document that is still sitting in a registry office.
Looking for a fully funded opportunity to study in the Middle East’s most dynamic academic hub? The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as a top destination for Nigerian students, thanks to its world-class universities, cutting-edge research facilities, and generous scholarship programs.
For the academic year 2025-2026, several fully funded scholarships in UAE are available to outstanding international students pursuing bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. These scholarships typically cover tuition fees, monthly stipends, free accommodation, visa support, health insurance, and in some cases, travel expenses.
The UAE is home to prestigious universities such as United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), Khalifa University, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), and American University of Sharjah, all of which offer generous funding for exceptional students.
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